As a dude who usually does not expose one shoulder, I must ask this of any single-shoulder-exposers: doesn’t the fact that one shoulder is a different temperature than the other bug the hell out of you? Not even that it’s cold – I’m assuming a temperate to warm climate is best for this type of outfit – but the fact that it’s so asymmetrical? I don’t think I could do it without going crazy.

a decently comfortoble shirt is about as insulated as tissue paper so the tempreature difference is hardly noticable – especially since, due to the layer being open any breeze etc will pass through it as well

I figured it’s meant to signify that even though it might appear plain and I guess “proper?” on Joyce it would look hot on Sal. But I then I remembered that Joyce is a little curvier than Sal so it might just be loose on her. I’m going with the latter though…didn’t really bother me.

She’s got a collared shirt that is baring one shoulder being worn over a tank top — with a bra strap from beneath that hanging down her arm. Obviously the poor girl doesn’t know how to dress herself; either that or her clothes just plain don’t fit right.

Anybody else notice that they are still studying limits (right/left-handed ones judging from the example on the board). Mr. David, just so that we have a frame of reference: What week of the Fall freshman semester are we at now after 42 months into this saga?

When I did Higher Math I in my Electrical Engineering studies, you got 1.0 (the best score) for 80 of 100 points. You were supposed to pass (4.0) with 30 points, but they lowered it to 20 after seeing the turnout (Aachen has a reputation of weeding out heavily). I brought a coed up to scratch in two weeks (no hankypanky involved), and she refused to even tell me afterwards what score she passed with “out of principle”. Still pissed at her for that. Not surprised Jason wants to know.

Try condensing two terms of math into two weeks of tutoring, and you have an awesome toolbox. I was the second of perhaps 200 to leave the exam (the first one just called in sick) with more than an hour left. I got 92 points and was “no way!”. So I went to the after-exam consultations. Turns out that my toolbox was better streamlined than the official solutions but defensible, so I got to 98 and an offer to tutor officially (for an engineering student, getting an offer from a math department was not bad).

Of course, things went downhill from there…

At any rate, 76 would likely have been a 1.3 in that exam, and 43 still a 3.3 or something (school grades here are 1 to 6, but university does not further differentiate failure, so the passing range is 1.0 to 4.0, and 5.0 is everything else).

I think we covered that 4 or 5 weeks into Calculus 2 at my university. It could have been week 2 if they skipped all the bullshit they make you learn before telling you that you should always use the Fundamental Theorem instead.

Also, I’m kind of shipping these two now. I want to see like twenty years from now they’ll have finally gotten the kids out of the house so they could spend some quality time together, and they’ll be lying there together in the afterglow, and Jason will say, “Oh that was capital. A+.”

And Sal will be all, “Oh, yeah, way better than that 43 you gave me, huh!?”

Mine used letters (no numbers were reported for report cards), but professors could and did use numbers and then map them to letters in a many to one relationship (i.e., many numbers to a given letter ). Math professors were especially prone to such.

The letter system isn’t really subjective. Numbers map into categories based on performance level. C’s are average performance, and should map to the general level of the class. B’s are above that level, A’s are excellent to perfect, D’s are below the average, and F is a total failure to grasp essential concepts. If the tests and homeworks are well designed, you’ll see this pattern emerge on it’s own, though many professors use curving systems to adjust.

Kind of a dickish thing to say, considering he did give her an F even though she did put out. Like neglecting to tip the pizza delivery guy because THEY didn’t actually make the pizza, then whining that you would have paid them hella more for giving you food than someone else after finding out how much someone else actually tipped them.

Dude, it is not standing by your principles to have sex with a girl you’re supposed to be tutoring. As a TA Jason has power over her, and a responsibility to make sure he behaves appropriately. I’m not saying it’s the end of the world, but giving up on tutoring Sal, and then hooking up with her is … pretty messed up.

Uh, he did not “give up on tutoring Sal”. For one thing, he never even agreed to tutor her. For another, she threw her booty at him without asking anything (which was kind of what she realized when it was too late). I think he’d still gave her all the tutoring she’d ask for in her inimitable manner. And frankly, we don’t actually know they spent all their time on hankypanky. Her grades did increase, and I doubt that all of it was an accident.

There’s no contradiction – he didn’t change her grades at all, because he hadn’t thought that’s what their sex was about. If he *had* let their having sex affect her grades, he’d certainly have given her a better score than 76…

I am not sure I am getting Jason’ reaction. First despite their relationship, he make a point of not modifying her score, which lead to some heated argument, then to make sure their ongoing doesn’t affect the result, he gives the test to an other T.A. to grade it, but then what he say last is in complete non-sequiture of what happened previously?

Is he suddenly implying he would have given her better score in exchange of sex? Because, unless I remember incorrectly, they never stopped having it. Why is he suddenly complaining he could have given her better score in exchange of sex if he is the one in the first place who made the test be graded by an other T.A. and he is still having sex with her anyway. So, this is in complete contradiction to what he just did and say beforehand and I can’t grasp from what it stems.

I really don’t understand. There is a logical step here I must be missing. What is this sudden statement about exactly and where does it come from?

Seeing the face he is doing, I can’t really agree with you. An improvement from 43 to 76 wouldn’t warrant joke of this kind and really seems out of character for Jason. Nope, he is making a snarky remark, but he seems serious about it. I don’t know. Learning your girlfriend has genuinely made such an improvement, the reaction of Jason really seems to comes out of nowhere; Even as a joke it doesn’t fit the context.

Sal’s not his girlfriend. She’s the student he’s not supposed to be sleeping with. Given that continuing to do so will put his job in jeopardy, driving her away is not necessarily something he wants to avoid.

You can be girlfriend/boyfriend with someone you are not supposed to. an Anyway, it’s semantic, they kind of have an exclusive relationship (I haven’t see them them sexually engage with anyone else) and it has keep going for while and kept frequenting each other. in my book, that qualify as girlfriend/boyfriend.

If you think that’s not enough to qualify as such, that’s fine, then, just replace the word with “the girl he has sex with” tough it’s more of a mouthful.

Anyway, I am not suggesting he is trying to drive her away. I simply don’t understand where his reaction to her score come from. it seems to fit in none of the present context.

It’s kinda not semantic. Referring to someone as a boyfriend or girlfriend and referring to their relationship as exclusive (even if neither of them are sleeping with anyone else, that is -not- the same thing as an exclusive relationship) is presumptuous. Possibly dangerously so. Labels like that matter to people, and throwing them on from the outside is a bit rude.

Imagine someone having casual sex, and then the other person starts going around saying they’re in a relationship because of it without discussing it. That’s creepy and possessive. I doesn’t -stop- being wrong just because you’re on the outside looking in.

I think it’s more along the lines of Sal wondering if Jason DID give her a boost, finding out she didn’t, Jason inquiring about her score, and pointing out that if he WAS the kind of person to give her a boost, it wouldn’t be to a measly C.

Really, given had their previous sexy times have been provoked by expression of anger and loathing on their parts, I would have thought if Jason was encouraged to do anything with her grades it’d be to keep them low so that Sal would continue to be furious with him and thus likely to have more sexy times.

I was speculating at one point that he was deliberately tutoring her badly so she’d keep coming back. The subsequent course of events has made me think that’s unlikely, but I haven’t entirely ruled it out.

My issue with her clothing isn’t her exposed shoulder per se. When she first wore it, it looked pretty good. It was more disheveled. The buttons weren’t done up right, and it was pulled more open along the chest, and didn’t sit evenly at her hips. It looks weird now because she is wearing the rest of the clothing normally. The buttons are done up correctly and it’s being worn like a normal shirt, except for the shoulder. So essentially, she would look less strange if she wore her shirt more like she didn’t know how to put on a shirt, because right now it looks like she doesn’t know how to put on shirts all the way.

Also, why in the world is she looking off into the distance in the second panel? in the first, I get it, she’s looking around for sneaks as she talks secretly to Jason. But in the second panel, she should be looking more at Jason, or something, instead she’s staring off into the back of the room.

I think it was her reflex. She was looking for sneaks, learned she earned grade the right way, and immediately felt a glow of merit. That tends to relax someone, and she wouldn’t turn until it was dispelled by Jason “yelling” at her.
Also, looking this way gives us a better view of her happiness.